Beginners weapons guide

Overview

This guide will explain some basic concepts about weapons. How damage is calculated? What is the difference between different weapon types?

Basics

There are 3 types of challenges in Thea 2 where you can use items (weapons):
Physical (Red), Mental (Yellow) and Spiritual (Purple).

Most of basic weapons you will see in early game are used in Fights – a Physical challenge, where you are actually trying to kill opponents and they are trying to kill you. Characters use their weapons and skills to inflict damage. Sounds easy? Not so fast :).

You may notice that same sword equipped by different characters deals different damage!

Let’s look closely at some weapon
Number after skull is damage multiplier – 2.3 in our case. It is applied to the attribute linked to the skill. For most basic melee weapons this attribute is Strength.
This is how we get damage inflicted with this hatched by this character: 11.0 * 2.3 = 25.3
25 is damage – you see in brackets after multiplier. Try to give this weapon to different characters and you’ll see that number in brackets changes (if characters has different Strength).

As you can see – the rule is simple. The higher the multiplier the higher the damage. Higher quality items usually have higher multiplier.

Damage is not everything!
Another important aspect of the skill (weapon) is Delay. All cards act in battle based on the delay. Some weapons are faster than others so you may kill you opponents before they can even hit you.
This where you can see the delay:
Each weapon has its own delay (in this case it is 4.6) and each character has its delay, based on Wits (in this case 3.2). Final delay for this skill (weapon) in the battle is a sum of item delay and character delay (4.6 + 3.2 = 7.8) – you see it in brackets.

Swords and Greatswords

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They both melee weapons, which means you’ll need to put your card in FIRST ROW to use it.
The icon explains that:
One-handed and Tho-handed swords have some important differences, so I’ll explain them separately.

Swords have a passive ability – Increase Shielding. They increase your shielding in the physical challenges. It is a renewale protection that is expended before hit points.
As this increase is percentage based – it is quite useless for characters without armor. But can be great for your tanks.
One handed swords have the HIGHEST SPEED in the game and the LOWEST DAMAGE multiplier.

One-handed sword can hit only one enemy – the closest one:

Similar to one-handed swords, greatswords provide some shielding, but one-handed sword + shield would provide more.

Greatswords have HIGH SPEED and MEDIUM DAMAGE multiplier

Their main feature is attack pattern:
Due to high speed and this splash damage your warrior can wipe out narrow battlefields before enemies can act.

Note that splash damage (by default) deals 50% of original damage. Some mid-late game weapons can change that.

You can unlock swords in research screen:

Clubs and Mallets

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These are slow weapons with T-Shape attack.

That makes hammers a good AOE. This is how works:
Warrior will deal 10 damage to the Boar and 5 damage to each adjanced card (if there will be).

One-handed clubs have the LOWEST DAMAGE multiplier (just like one-handed swords), but Two-handed mauls have HIGH DAMAGE multiplier.
Their only drawback is speed. They both have SLOW speed.

You can unlock clubs and mallets in research screen to craft them:

Hatchets and Battle Axes

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Axes have the HIGHEST DAMAGE and FAST SPEED in the game.

So what is the drawback?
Why not use it all the time?
It all about damage mode. Single melee only.

Playing with axe (especially 2-handed) might require you to have a good armor for protection.
Also it might be a good idea to put your axemen after enemy placed some glass cannon at their front line, so your damage potential won’t be wasted on some meat shield.

Spears and Polearms

Spears have LOW DAMAGE multiplier and MEDIUM SPEED
Polearms have HIGH DAMAGE and LOW SPEED

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They have three main advantages over other weapons:
First strike will damage an enemy when you place your character to the board. This is happens instantly – before battle even begins.

Vertical splash allows you to hit enemies at the back line. This will be normal damage during the battle.

Ability to put a card into SECOND ROW (non-melee) allows your wounded warriors still deal decent damage while staying in relative safety.

Ranged weapons

There are 3 types of weapons in this category: Bows, Wands and Javelins.
All of them allow you to put card at the SECOND ROW of the battefield – behind your melee characters.
In other aspects those 3 types are quite different.

Unlike basic melee weapons, bows scale with Perception instead of Strength.
Give it to your Hunter or Gatherer – they usually have good Perception.

Bows have LOWEST DAMAGE multiplier and LOW SPEED.
But cool part about them – you can aim any enemy.

NOTE: Crossbows are no different to Bows from game mechanic point of view. If you’ll try to craft a bow from metal – you’ll get a crossbow.

They also scale with perception, and they have First Strike just like spears.
Their main drawback – they cannot target any enemy.

And here comes fun part!

Wands scale with Destiny

Also you may notice that cards icon is different

If you remember beginning of this guide, I mentioned that there are 3 challenge types in Thea 2 (in fact there are 6, but let’s keep it simple for now).
There are Physical (RED), Mental (YELLOW) and Spiritual (PURPLE).
All other basic weapons we discussed so far can only be used in Physical (RED) challenges. And you’ll see RED card icons next to corresponding skill.
Wands can be used ONLY in YELLOW and PURPLE challenges.

It is very important to understand that your mages wearing basic wands will be useless in RED fights.

Wands have AVERAGE DAMAGE multiplier and the LOW SPEED.
Just like bows, wands are ranged weapons that will allow you to choose you targets sometimes

You can unlock all ranged weapons for crafting in one go